Starting from the analysis of Verstörung by Thomas Bernhard, the article discusses some forms of tragicomedy and melancholy in three cases of Baroque literature, two librettoes and a pièce of Commedia dell'arte: the situations are two suicides in laughing context and one comic-grotesque in a «tragedy». In the last pages, the subject is Miguel de Unamuno and his concept of «malhumorismo».